So with things getting sorted at home I have been exploring the neighbourhood.  We live in Da’an (大安) area of Taipei.  It’s incredibly central, well connected with metro stations but also our street: Renai Road (仁愛路) is particularly green.  This is what our building faces on to:

very green (at dusk)

green (at midday)

It makes for some very pleasant walks.

Every lunch hour i get ambitous and think today is the day i am going to try some local cuisine, and then I always encounter a menu board like this:

I was promised pictures of my food - where are my pictures?!

I will say whatever they are serving its cheap.  25NTD = $0.80 CAD I just wish I knew what they were serving.  And no amount of pointing and smiling could really help me in this situation (say if I just point at random things on the menu and they say something to me, they could be saying do you want hot sauce with that, or they could be saying they ran out, or they could be saying do you want fries with that, this is my predicament).   So generally I admit defeat and sulk into the local 711 (or ‘7’ as its locally called) and buy some dingy ready made noodle dish.   A few weeks with menu flash cards and I should be able to recognize a few things off those characters – i hope! Otherwise it may be time to pick up a 711 loyalty card.

So, unlike any ikea in Canada or the UK, the Ikea here is actually located in a downtown location.  Happy to see this, makes it way easier to get to (one metro stop away for us), and dead easy to flag a taxi down at the end with our purchases.   Its strange though, it is in a commercial building several stories high shared with other shops and no parking that would could see.   Not your typical ikea big box store.

But they still managed to pack in all their show rooms, plus the typical cafeteria/restaurant and huge market place.  Funny to be on the other side of the world and yet in the familiar world of Billy bookcases and poang chairs.

The Chinese trend of hanging out in Ikea appears to be true here in Taipei as well.  We saw plenty of people lounging in the show rooms – including one family where the young daughter was lying lengthwise across the entire couch, reading, with a blanket pulled up to her chin.  interesting thing to do on a Saturday i guess?  bonus for us, with so many of the patrons with either their feet up on the showroom coffee tables, napping in the show beds or rammed into the restaurant devouring meatballs with lingonberry sauce, that left the checkout queue empty and made our shopping experience the fastest I’ve ever had at an Ikea.

The other bonus for us: the cab ride home cost less than £2.

So a bit of a blur.  We got in yesterday afternoon and after an incredibly long and thorough run through of the apartment with the landlord and the estate agent, we settled in.  We had Max down for the night by 6:30pm but his jetlag is brutal, so he was up every 2 hours last night.  We’ve also come across huge problems importing our cat.   The agency we have used has royal pooched us at every turn.  Mips is currently being held hostage at customs until the agency files the correct paperwork.  The mistake they made?  they put the wrong age for him.  nice.

I did notice this at the airport though :

At Heathrow you’re lucky to find a landing card let alone a pen.  Reading glasses?  not a chance.